


Mac Prays Away His Gay

by Vamillepudding



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Codependency, M/M, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28338039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vamillepudding/pseuds/Vamillepudding
Summary: And then the doors to Paddy’s Pub open and Mac bursts in, phone still pressed against one ear, panting like he ran all the way here, all sweaty and red and excited. “Guys,” he says, “I’m going to pray away my gay.”Or: Mac signs himself up for a conversion camp as the quickest way to find hot gay men. To protect Mac from STDs and heartbreak, Dennis teams up with Charlie to commit a hate crime that involves Dennis in a dress.
Relationships: Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	Mac Prays Away His Gay

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [cynassa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynassa) who enabled all my terrible decisions.

“I really think I can do it, man.” 

“You? Please. If anyone in this bar is able to blow himself, it’s me.“ 

“Dennis, I’ve seen your dick. Come on.” 

“You saw it _one_ time, in the dark! That doesn’t count.” 

“I saw it _several times_ , in full daylight, because every time it’s Mac’s turn to pick a movie, he picks your sex tapes.” 

Dennis laughs. “No, he doesn’t. He always picks Predator.” 

“During your movie nights, maybe. During our movie nights, we mostly just watch you tricking chicks into banging you, which, by the way? Super weird.” 

There is a pause. Charlie knocks back his beer, gestures Dee for another bottle, and briefly gets distracted by the chime of his phone. It’s Frank, sending him a dick pic. There are also three or eight missed calls from Mac, but Mac probably wants to talk about something really boring, like how he doesn’t know what to get Dennis for his birthday, or that he forgot to buy Dennis’ hair dye, or that he got robbed again and is stuck in the hospital now. Charlie deletes the notifications, sends Frank a string of emojis, and by the time he looks back up, Dennis’ face is the picture of rejection and hurt pride. 

“You guys have movie nights without me?” he asks. 

“ _You_ have movie nights without _me_ all the time,” Charlie says. “Is that- Jesus Christ, he’s calling again.” 

“May I?” Dennis asks and, without waiting for an answer, takes Charlie’s phone and accepts the call. Charlie leans back in his seat, waving his hands in the direction of a bar to remind Dee of his beer. Meanwhile, Dennis has sat up straight, his voice low and insistent and exactly the kind of creepy that would keep Charlie up at night, if it weren’t for the cat food. 

“Hello, Mac,” Dennis is saying. He’s smiling, which looks strange and off-putting. “Would you like to guess what Charlie has been telling me?” 

“Don’t draw me into your shit, man. Dee, beer!” 

“Dee, beer,” Dennis repeats, while on the other end of the line, there is the urgent murmur of Mac’s frantic apologies. Wait – that’s not right. Charlie knows Mac’s apology voice, hears him use it on Dennis, like, fourteenty times a day. This isn’t it. 

He gets his confirmation when Dennis grows very still, like one of those statues in the museum movie right before they start moving. “What,” he says. 

And then the doors to Paddy’s Pub open and Mac bursts in, phone still pressed against one ear, panting like he ran all the way here, all sweaty and red and excited. “Guys,” he says, “I’m going to pray away my gay.” 

**MAC PRAYS AWAY HIS GAY  
  
**

As the Brain of the group, Mac came prepared. He’s stolen Charlie’s markers, he stole one of Dee’s bedsheets, he’s put the work in, and he has an awesome poster to show for it that he now proudly hangs up in the bar. 

The gang, as always, is unsupportive. 

“Why are there so many pictures of Jesus on there?” Dee asks critically. 

“Because Jesus was the ultimate twink,” Mac explains patiently. “And he got loads of action! All those followers he had, all the feet washing, and then he even invented BPDM with all that cross shit that he did. The man is an icon.” 

“He’s right, Dee,” Dennis says. He draws himself up to his full height, which is almost more bigger than Mac, but only a little bit. Mac makes up for it in having more muscles, though. “Jesus was a man of kink. I wouldn’t expect the likes of you to understand.” 

“Thank you, Dennis.” Mac salutes Dennis with his beer, one good bro to another. Dennis frowns. Mac waits for a few seconds, to see if Dennis is going to salute him back, or jump in with any more useful info. When nothing of the sort happens, Mac moves on. “Anyway, so I was thinking, what did Jesus have that I don’t? Then it came to me that he was Jewish, so I was just on my way to one of those sin-agogues to convert when I ran into those guys that were handing out flyers, and they’re saying all these things that make perfect sense, like how God hates gays and women and that I should come to one of their camps to pray myself straight, and I’m thinking, God definitely hates women but there’s no way he hates gays, because what’s more manly than gay sex, am I right?”

Mac pauses, looking expectantly at Dennis. Dennis frowns harder, while next to him, Charlie is nodding along in complete agreement. Possibly Dee is also saying something, but Mac usually tries not to listen. Gives him headaches. 

“Gotta say, Dee, so far this all makes sense to me.” Charlie shrugs. 

“Exactly! But then I also thought, you know, I’m in my forties now, and I only just came out. Do you know how hard it is as a forty-two-year-old gay man to pick up guys? It’s so hard, and frankly, it makes me feel oppressed.” 

“You _are_ oppressed,” Charlie says. “All those, you know, and with the, you know.” 

Dennis shakes his head, a tiny movement that nevertheless immediately makes Mac’s eyes snap towards him. “Let’s not get carried away here, guys. I think we should all acknowledge as a group that the reason Mac isn’t successfully banging his way through Philly’s gay population is not because of his age, it’s because his face is so ugly.” 

This draws approving murmuring from both Dee and Charlie. 

“He has a point there,” Dee says. 

“Makes me want to puke,” Charlie agrees. 

Mac, feeling more oppressed than ever, loudly bangs his beer bottle against the table to recapture everyone’s attention. His superhuman strength and his feline speed make it a little difficult to judge the necessary power he needs to generate, and so the bottle shatters. One of the splinters hits Dee in the neck. Dee falls off the bar stool, which means that Mac can finally sit down. 

“But _then_ it occurs to me that, if there’s ever going to be a place with lots of single gay men who’re desperate to get off, it’s-“ 

“This bar?” Dee asks from the floor. 

“-a conversion camp! So, that’s my plan. Tomorrow, I’m going to a conversion camp.” Mac beams at them. Next to the bar stool, Dee passes out.  
  


***

Dennis is fuming. He hasn’t been this angry since his nanny made him throw away his collection of animal carcasses when he was six. Back then, he tried to get rid of that stupid bitch by first pretending that she touched him. When his parents didn’t care, he switched tactics and said that he saw her stealing his mother’s jewellery. That got her deported back to Cleveland faster than she could blink. 

Maybe, he thinks, he should get Mac deported. But then, who would peel his apples for him? Who would dye his hair and prepare his bi-weekly meal and massage his feet? No. Mac has to stay. Mac has to _stay_. 

“Dude, are you okay?” Charlie asks. They’re at Charlie and Frank’s place after dropping Dee off at the hospital. She doesn’t have health insurance, but Dennis told the doctor that his sister would be happy to offer any means of compensation for her treatment, as soon as she woke up. He has to prove that at least _one_ of them is a good person, even if Mac isn’t. 

“What?”

“It’s just that you’ve been kind of staring and shaking for a while. Want some cat food to calm you down?” 

“Thanks, Charlie, but I already ate twice this week,” Dennis informs him condescendingly. “Some of us have to watch our carbs.”

“No, sure, I know about the, you know, I basically have a licence, I don’t need you to tell me about cars.” 

“It just makes me sick,” Dennis says, interrupting Charlie’s nonsensical ramblings. “He’s only just come out, and he thinks he’s ready to seduce all these poor closeted men? All these young minds, ready to be moulded into what you want them to be, and Mac is going to corner the whole market for himself?” 

“Um-“ 

“And then what, what does he think is going to happen? He’s going to settle for the first legal Jesus twink he sees? Are they going to pray together? Meet each other’s mums? Go to the cemetery, dig up a grave, and cut open a corpse to see what’s inside? How dare they! Mac knows it’s always been _my_ dream to do that with him!” 

“Creepy,” Charlie says, inching away. “I’m just gonna-“ 

“I know what the problem is,” Dennis says. “Of course I do. Do you want to know what the problem is, Charlie? Do you?” 

Charlie, nervously eying the exit, settles back on the futon when Dennis glares at him. “Sure. Hit me.”

“The problem,” Dennis says loudly, “is that Mac has never been hatecrimed against.”

“Um. What?” 

“I’m glad you asked. You see, hate crimes are what keeps the minorities in check. Teaches them to be on guard. Teaches people like Mac to not just go around abandoning their friends to fuck some college kid he barely knows. But Mac, being too chickenshit to come out for most of his life, has never experienced that. He doesn’t know the rules.” 

Charlie looks like he’s thinking really hard. That’s good. Dennis appreciates it. There is no way someone like Charlie can possibly understand the genius of Dennis’ mind, but it’s nice that he tries, even if he can never-

“So you want us to hatecrime Mac, to stop him from cheating on the gang?” 

“See, I knew you wouldn’t- oh.” Dennis pauses. “I guess that’s right.” 

“Sweet. Let me get my cape, and then we can go beat up Mac.”  
  


***

The St Andrew’s Cross Camp is twenty minutes outside Philly, which is almost enough for Mac to change his mind. But then he decides, hey, if a twenty-minute drive isn’t a worthy sacrifice to get laid, then what is? 

Mac parks Dennis’ Range Rover right next to the tree he almost drove into, and is led into a room where a lot of really hot men and also some gross old people are gathered in a circle on the ground. They’re holding hands, while three priests loudly cite bible verses. So far, it’s not very different from all those bible camps Mac went to as a kid while his dad was in jail and his mother was taking a much-needed break from all the difficult parenting Mac’s presence forced her to do. The only difference is that now, there are no women here, which makes it infinitely better. 

“Take a seat,” one of the priests instructs Mac, so he does, dropping down right between two guys in their twenties, one of whom looks a little like Dennis, if Dennis were twenty-five and exercising every day like Mac keeps telling him to. 

Mac grabs Not-Dennis’ hand, as in the background, the priests have launched into a chant. He doesn’t take the hand of the other guy, because that dude is super gross. 

“So, do you come here often?” Mac whispers. 

Not-Dennis blinks. “To gay conversion therapy?” 

“Therapy? Dude, if you think this is therapy, you’re dead wrong. Therapy is, like, Dennis, that’s my roommate and my most bestest friend ever, and when he goes to the doctor for his BPDM, which is also a sex thing, which is, like, really cool, because it’s like the state is paying him to have sex.” 

“What,” Not-Dennis says. He’s looking at Mac with a look of incomprehension, kind of like Charlie every single day. See, this is why Mac likes to hang out with Dennis the mostest. Dennis _gets_ him. 

He only realises that the chant has stopped when one of the priests says, “Anything to share with the class?” 

“No, Father,” Mac says politely. The bible recitation starts again. Mac uses this as an opportunity to stroke the back of Not-Dennis’ hand. 

“ _Dude_.” 

“Hey, I’m just trying to help you,” Mac whispers. “Wanna go to the bathrooms?” 

“Is there a problem here?” Another priest has wandered over. This one is seriously hot. Excellent bone structure. Mac’s mouth feels dry. He uses Not-Dennis’ hand to fan himself. 

“No problem,” he says. “Sorry, Father.” 

“Ronald McDonald?” the priest asks. Mac flinches, looking around to make sure nobody has heard, only to realise that everyone is staring at him. Goddamnit. 

“Yes?” 

“Come with me.” 

Mac reluctantly rises, though he makes sure to flex his muscles, just in case anyone is still watching. “Is there a gym here?” he asks the priest on their way out the room. “Can I use it? It’s important that I stay in shape.” 

As the door falls shut behind them, the priest turns to face Mac, his judgemental gaze travelling up and down Mac’s body. He says, in an oddly fake possibly-Scottish accent, “Me, I wouldn’t bother if I were ye, laddie. Ain’t nothing ter be done ‘bout a body like yers.” 

“What?” 

The priest rolls his eyes and drops the accent. “I’m saying you’re already too ugly to bother, Jesus Christ, Mac.” 

And that’s when the dollar drops. “Dee?”  
  


***

“Now,” Dennis says, smiling benevolently at Charlie, “I’ve come up with an excellent plan.” He’s in a good mood. On his way to work this morning he saw some sort of small rodent get run over by a car, and the sight of all that blood did wonders to calm his nerves. It doesn’t even matter that Mac didn’t make him breakfast today in his haste to get to his freaky little church camp. Dennis feels great. 

“Do we even really need a plan?” Charlie asks, like an idiot. “I kinda thought we could just, you know. Knock him around a bit.” 

“Oh, Charlie. No, no. This is why I have a college degree and you bash rats for a living. You don’t think things through, not like I do. If we did ‘knock him around a bit’-“ Dennis makes air quotes, only to drop his hands when he realises that Charlie looks confused, “-wouldn’t he recognise us immediately?” 

“I guess.” 

“That’s right! Because he knows us.” 

“So we wear masks,” Charlie says, lighting up. “There’s this awesome gorilla mask that I’ve been wanting to try for ages, and-“ 

“Masks? Don’t be ridiculous. That would never work.” 

“It wouldn’t?” 

“Does Mac know any gorillas? No, he doesn’t, because we don’t live in a zoo. Which means that he would know that’s not your real face, which _then_ means that he’d know it was you, since you’re the only one stupid enough in all of Philly to wear a disgusting gorilla mask.”

Charlie deflates. The knowledge of having successfully beaten him down through the power of his intellect gives Dennis a warm flutter in his belly that might, with patience, turn almost into a real feeling. Still, it’s nothing compared to what beating down Mac makes him feel. That’s exactly why they need to get Mac back – so that Dennis can belittle him and then bask in Mac’s stupid hurt look. 

Dennis snaps his fingers directly in front of Charlie’s face to regain his attention. “I’ve proven to you that Mac would recognise any mask immediately. So the solution is naturally not to wear one at all. Instead, we’ll give him – Dennissandra.” 

“Yeah, I’m lost.” 

“I know you are. Let me break it down for you. What Mac _expects_ is to see us in some stupid obvious disguise. What Mac will _get_ is me, dressed like the hottest chick he’s ever seen. I’m thinking long legs, maybe some sort of corset, definitely padding, and, well, look at my face. I don’t think we really need to change anything about that, do we?” 

“We don’t?” 

Dennis laughs, downs his shot, and immediately pours himself another one. This will work. He knows it will. Now, they just need to go find him a dress, and then they can go rescue Mac from gay sex.  
  


***

“What are you doing here? And why are you dressed as a dude?”

“Is it working? It’s working, isn’t it? You totally believed me.” Dee has taken off her moustache, which Mac now realises was fake all along. “And I bet you were just about to hit on me, too. Were you? Admit it. Admit that you were going to hit on me, because you have no self-respect and also because you know that I look nothing like a bird, I’m super hot, and you want a piece of this.” 

“That’s homophobic,” Mac tells her. “Hey, do you think you could put the moustache back on? It kind of made you look more-“ 

“Like a dude you wanna bang?” 

“I was going to say trustworthy, but yeah, that too.”

“ _Ugh_.” After a second of hesitation, Dee does actually put the moustache back. She instantly looks better, like if Dennis had a twin. Well. Like if Dennis had an _attractive_ twin. “I’m here to infiltrate the organisation. All that talk about gay guys made me realise just how sexist it all is. So, what, you don’t want to sleep with me just because I’m a woman?” 

“I’m gay,” Mac says. “So, yes. Pretty much.” 

“Well, I, personally, think that you’re setting the entire feminist movement back several steps. We’re not in the dark ages anymore. Men should be able to sleep with women if they want to!” 

“We _don’t_ want to.”

“And therefore,” Dee says, talking right over him, “I’ve come to show everyone here that women can be just as attractive as guys.” 

“By dressing like one.” 

“That’s right,” Dee says, removing her moustache again. Right up until this point Mac had pretty much believed her, but as soon as she noticeably looks like a chick again, there’s just something about her that makes it hard to listen to. Must be her voice, he decides. She always gets so hysterical and screechy. 

As a man and a catholic, Mac realises that it’s his responsibility to bring some sense into this. “Listen,” he says, “you need to go. You’re ruining my game!” 

“Mac, your game is _stupid_. How do you think I feel, huh? Knowing there are all these men here who would never fuck me because of my gender?” 

Mac, who had been prepared to shove past Dee and return to the prayers, pauses. This, he feels, is finally something he can relate to. There are lots of men who don’t want to fuck _him_ because of his gender. Maybe Dee is – not right, because Dee is never right, but maybe she has a little bit of a point, on account of sharing her genes with Dennis, who is almost as smart as Mac. Maybe, Mac thinks, they’re _both_ oppressed. 

“So what you’re saying is, I need to sleep with a woman so that I’m not homophobic?” 

Dee lets out a single, sharp bit of laughter. “We’re at a gay conversion camp. I can guarantee you that there is not a single woman anywhere near-“ She falls silent, as they see someone new approaching. “Here,” she finishes weakly. 

Mac, without taking his eyes off the woman – and it _is_ a woman –, offers, “I’ll sleep with this one.”  
  


***

Charlie is, like, really confused. He woke up this morning really just wanting a nice day in bed with Frank and a gallon of glue or something, and instead, Dennis invaded his home and forced him to do all this weird shit for him, like helping him shave his legs, or buying a wig. “It needs to look convincing,” Dennis kept saying, and Charlie doesn’t even know what ‘it’ is, he just knows that he left for five minutes or maybe two hours to follow the Waitress to her yoga class, and when he came back, Dennis was wearing a dress and looking like a chick, and demanding that Charlie come with him to the weird church camp thingy. 

After a fight over who should drive the car – “I don’t really trust you behind the wheel, Dennis,” Charlie had said, glancing meaningfully at Dennis’ boobs – they’d finally gone on the road, and Dennis had spent the entire ride asking weird questions like if he was pretty and if he was prettier than Dee. 

“Everyone’s prettier than Dee, now shut the hell up,” Charlie had said, and Dennis almost got them into an accident over his attempt to scratch Charlie’s neck for telling him to shut up, which like, honestly had confirmed all of Charlie’s prejudices over women drivers. 

And now they’re here, and there’s a dude here who looks a bit like Dee but like, if Dee were smart and not a total bitch, and there’s also Mac, who is staring at Dennis like if Dennis were a can of spray paint. 

“Woah,” Mac says. 

“No,” says the dude who looks like Dee. “No, no, no. That doesn’t count, Mac. It doesn’t!” 

“Hello, Mac.” Dennis smiles suggestively at Mac. “Like what you see?” 

“My dick is like, so confused right now,” Mac says. His dick doesn’t look confused to Charlie. It looks very sure of itself. 

Dude-Dee is scowling. “That’s not a real woman! We said it had to be a real woman.” 

Just like that, everyone stops to collectively glare at Dude-Dee. “Wow,” Mac says. 

“Real nice,” Dennis says. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.” 

“Not cool, man,” Charlie agrees. “Really not cool.” 

Dude-Dee is speechless for a moment. Then he shakes his head, and storms off in a huff. 

Now that they’re alone, Dennis turns back to Mac. His lipstick is a little smudged, but his nail polish is perfect, and when he reaches out to trace Mac’s jawline with his fingers, Mac seems ready to melt on the spot. “I think we should, uh-“ 

“Definitely,” Dennis agrees. “Let’s go find a closet somewhere.” 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Charlie says. “Hold on a second, Dennis. I thought we were gonna like, hatecrime him! How is this hate criming?” 

“You were going to hate crime me?” Mac asks, hurt, and is promptly ignored.

Dennis smiles condescendingly at Charlie. “Well, Charlie, I hate Mac.”

“You _hate_ me?”

“Therefore, every interaction we have is an extension of that hatred. That means the longer we have sex, the more hateful it gets. We might even need to do it multiple times, to really get the point across.”

Charlie nods slowly. “Right, I think I get it. It’s like how I want to hatecrime with the Waitress.” 

Dennis is no longer listening, he’s too busy sucking little hatecrimes on Mac’s neck. Mac doesn’t look very oppressed, but Charlie figures that he doesn’t know much about this sort of thing, anyway. 

And then, just as Dennis and Mac are walking off to go have sex and make little babies or something, Dude-Dee returns with another priest in tow. “There, Father,” Dude-Dee says accusingly. “Look at them! They’re about to sin!” 

The second priest clutches at his heart. However, Dude-Dee’s triumphant expression falls as the second priest says, “My, the therapy has never worked this quickly.” 

And Mac and Dennis go on, undisturbed, as behind them, a group of gay men applauds Mac’s successful conversion.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
